Old school

From Daily Time Waster: "An AR with a 60-round magazine would be better, but a Viking with an axe is just old school."


13 comments:

MikeD said...

Can't say I've ever seen a 60 round magazine. Plenty of 20s and 30s, and even a 100 round drum (not recommended; too prone to jam). But never a 60. And I'd agree. I'd rather my defense be in my hands. But given the opponent, is it too much to ask for silver ammunition as well?

Lars Walker said...

The axe could be silver-inlaid; the resolution isn't fine enough to tell. But many magical beings are allergic to iron, so it's worth a try.

Tom said...

I have seen two 30-round magazines clipped together so when the first is empty you just eject, turn it over, and put the full one in.

Also, not sure sallying forth is the best tactic here. Make them come to you through the doorway. That way you get 3 one-on-one fights instead of 1 three-on-one fight.

Grim said...

The tactical risks of doorways were well known to Vikings; the very first verse of the Havamal treats them.

raven said...

Gonna use an axe, you need room to swing it. Best bite your shield for a while and howl, then rush the demon bastards.. Reason plays no role in this sort of contest. A berserker would find much of interest in the Hagakure.

Lord Naoshige said ,"The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate."

Tom said...

Yeah, Hagakure was written by a man who never saw combat. "The way of the warrior is death" is not particularly good advice. He endorses immediate action (good) without adequate preparation for victory (not so good). For example, he criticized the 47 ronin for taking their time (a few years) to prepare and succeed in getting their revenge. They should have simply attacked immediately and died, he said, even though they would have failed to get revenge. I can't really respect that viewpoint.

I prefer Musashi and his emphasis on winning. He had no problem risking his life, but in the end, the way of the warrior for him was finding a way to victory. He and Patton would probably have gotten along: The point is to make the other guy die for his country.

Of course, Hagakure became a handbook for the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. That did not work out well for them, but they rushed in and died sure enough.

E Hines said...

It doesn't look to me like our man is in a headlong charge against the three. He could have just stepped out far enough to draw them in.

Tsun-tse had some thoughts on the thing, too. He began with shaping the battlefield before the fight, including shaping the enemy's mind. He almost went so far as to say that if two armies actually came to blows, both generals had failed. Of course that larger picture doesn't factor in with our man, just the shaping part.

Eric Hines

Tom said...

True, it could be a ruse. "Every battle is won before it's fought," eh?

E Hines said...

Could be, anyway, with decent planning and preparation. As a long-retired NBA defensive specialist said in an advertisement, he had most of his rebound before the shot went up.

Eric Hines

raven said...

There is a distinct difference between an army and a lone man facing odds.

Grim said...

My father, who as a volunteer fireman used to work a lot of car wrecks on lonely highways, used to tell the story of one of the few wrecker drivers back in those days. This guy was loading a car up on his truck when dad drove up, the first person to respond to the accident other than the people who were involved. Some of those people seemed very irate, so Dad asked the wrecker driver if they'd been threatening him.

"Naw," was the easy response. "There ain't but four of 'em."

Tom said...

That's a good story, Grim.

Raven, interestingly, Musashi claimed that single combat and mass combat between armies was analogous. He fought quite a few individual combats, served in several battles leading up to Sekigahara (where he fought at the age of 16), and served as an officer during the Shimabara Rebellion, though that only lasted a few months. I don't know if he really had the experience in army vs. army combat to make the claim he did, but it's an interesting analogy he takes some time to develop. In some ways it is obvious: surprise, maneuver, training, reconnaissance, psychological preparation, etc., are important to both.

Ymarsakar said...

"Cause pain before you injure. Injure before you maim. Maim before you kill. And if you must kill, make it a clean kill. Squeeze every drop of life from the opponent. Because life is so precious, it cannot be wasted, even in death."

“Let him cut your skin, and you cut his flesh. Let him cut your flesh, and you cut his bones. Let him cut your bones, and you cut off his life.”

"'He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all.' - Montrose's Toast

Hagakure is closer to an MBA business lifestyle lesson for feudal bureaucrats that have lost the ability to kill anything, including themselves. Due to the lack of combat experience, there would be child lords that are ordered to commit seppuko except they couldn't obtain the willpower. So the state sends an executioner to make sure the head falls, and only requires that they "touch" the fan or wakizashi, to give "notice" that they are committing seppuko. Thus the Hagakure was critical in inculcating the warrior mentality amongst a new generation of aristocrats. It would be more effective in US schools than Musashi's work. Musashi is better for business competitors that are cutthroat, whether literally or figuratively.

This had apparently already become normal practice during the 47 Ronin days. Japan had some interesting faction novels about it too. There were 2 primary factions, the household prime minister and the city direct vassals that saw their lord get sentenced. The city faction was the crazy berserker faction, while the household in the countryside, that had rank status, was the calmer more logistically orientated faction. It took the combination of both factions, yin and yang, to produce the outcome.

Hagakure would have been with the the more hasty, younger faction. As a lesser vassal or lower bureaucrat, it would make perfect logical sense. However, for the household regent that has to consider what the Shogunate will do to the last remaining heir of the household, they could not be too hasty, as their responsibility is not revenge but maintaining the bloodline, even if that line has their demesne taken away by the imperial system.

Iron and silver are legendary artifacts of a time when humans had to fight supernatural entities without understanding EM fields. Metal, especially magnetic metal or meteoric metals or dense metals like lead/gold, intersect with energy fields and disrupt them. For entities that sustain their life force off of energy fields or utilize energy fields as a weapon, this was most likely not a good thing for them. The Easterners refined a different method, using the iron and content of the blood, to create a biological energy field. Defense+Offense.

Gold has been used before, Ark of the Covenant, a weapon of mass destruction for its day. Gold is denser than iron or lead. It blocks EM fields or redirects them.

Musashi correctly noted the tactics for 1v1, and 1v2v3v4v6 deathmatches. The solution for the latter is to turn it into a series of the former. Battlefield tactics and strategy was not described from a commander's view point, that was more Sun Tzu's purview.